Pembirdie

Category: relationships

  • Book review: “You Should Be Grateful”

    “You Should Be Grateful”: Stories of race, identify, and transracial adoption, by Angela Tucker.

    I came across Angela Tucker while googling adoption. I listened to one of her podcasts. She comes across as a gracious, well-spoken, intelligent and empathetic woman.

    You Should Be Grateful tells part of her adoptee story and her perspective from working at an adoption agency and mentoring adoptees, as well as incorporating research and philosophies related to adoption and transracial adoption in particular. (Transracial adoption referring to people adopting a child of a different race/ethnicity/skin color.) Ms. Tucker is a Black woman who was adopted as a young child by parents who also adopted multiple other children of various ethnicities and raised her in a loving, supportive environment. Despite having a closed adoption, Ms. Tucker was eventually able to track down and reconnect with her birth parents, relatives and half-siblings.

    Although I think it’s becoming more common now, historically there are more narratives from adoptive parents than adopted children, and while no doubt every adopted child’s story is different, reading about an adoptee’s experience is valuable. Ms. Tucker writes generously and honestly, both about the excellent upbringing her adopted parents provided her and her irrepressible longing to know her birth mother, as well as the complicated emotions that were part and parcel of finding and connecting with her birth family.

    In the book, Ms. Tucker introduces three words/concepts that were new to me:

    1. Hiraeth (here-eyeth): A deep yearning for a home that never was. Angela makes the case that all adoptees have some degree of hiraeth.
    2. Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it. (A neologism coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.)
    3. Sondersphere: A realm where every person in an adoptee’s life has a place–where birth parents and adoptive parents and biological aunties and foster parents and adoptive cousins all exist together. (Coined by Ms. Tucker, based on a word coined by John Koenig.)

    Another concept she discussed was that of a “ghost kingdom,” essentially what someone imagines their life would have been like if an event (such as adoption) had not happened.

    Ms. Tucker is not anti-adoption, and she is not anti-transracial adoption although she raises a lot of concerns. However, as the word “sondersphere” suggests, she is strongly in favor of adoptions being widely open. While she understands that adoptive parents have a responsibility to care for their child’s wellbeing and that birth parents may very well not have the capacity to be a healthy presence at times, she argues that honest information sharing is the best policy. In her own experience, she found that connecting with her birth family actually strengthened the (already strong) bonds she had with her adopted family. I could see adoptive families having concerns that if their bond with their adopted child is not very strong, bringing in the birth family could weaken them further. At the same time, those concerns are centered on the adoptive parents, rather than on the child.

    Ms. Tucker also touches on the microaggressions that transracial adoptees may face, and helpful or unhelpful ways their adoptive parents interact with their race. She believes it is imperative for transracial adoptees to interact with children and adults who share their birth culture so adoptees can connect with that aspect of themselves, rather than ignoring it’s existence. Interestingly, she includes a discussion of how assigning food-labels to a racial characteristic (“chocolate” skin, “almond-shaped” eyes, “oreo”) carries the connotation of being able to eat, and therefore dominate, the person with this trait. I’m still on the fence on what I think about this one. This afternoon I called my cat, “honey.” My dad and mom called each other this all the time. Were they subconsciously trying to dominate each other? I think not.

    Of course, reading a book like this, I can’t help but relate it to my own experience, not as an adoptee but as a member of a household that included two transracial adoptees, my African American youngest brother and Chinese youngest sister. Their adoptions were closed. We grew up in a small town in southwest Nebraska, where there were two other (also adopted) Black kids, one other (also adopted) Asian kid, and one (also adopted) Indian kid. There were a decent amount of Hispanics who mostly stayed together and everyone else was White. We had an (also adopted) Korean aunt, a Black uncle, and an (also adopted)Korean cousin, but they lived far away. I’m not aware that my siblings had meaningful, sustained relationships with any Black or Asian adults during their childhoods. We did not participate in an adoption-related activities or camps, that I am aware of. As a kid, I truly did not believe racism was still a problem.

    I know now that I was wrong.

    My brother experienced things growing up that I didn’t know about until much later in life. I don’t know about my sister, but she’s shared events from the past few years that demonstrate she deals with microaggressions on a regular basis. (Recent example: her boss said she was a standout member of the ESL program at work.)

    My siblings have never seemed interested in talking with me about being adopted, or about the emotional struggles they may or may not be going through. I wonder if they have experienced “exulansis.” I’m sure I haven’t presented as a great listener. While I don’t think I’ve ever felt that they “should be grateful,” growing up I never considered they would feel different at all. I wish I’d known better.

    Cautions regarding this book: it is certainly not from a Christian perspective. It trends toward “wokeness” but I don’t believe to the point of being unhelpful. When describing group discussions with adoptees, Ms. Tucker is always careful to describe that she introduces her pronouns when starting the discussion, which is something that goes along with LGBTQ+ affirming practices.

    SDG

  • Maybe we’re not going to see the world?

    I am on the Internet a lot (sigh) and spend a lot of time reading personal finance blogs. It seems that people blogging about personal finance, financial independence, and FIRE have something in common besides wanting to be good with money and to retire early and do whatever they want (like blogging): they all love to travel.

    Now, a lot of these blogs also happen to be geared toward physicians or high earners, so I guess that should adjust my mindset somewhat, but it’s common to read about people spending 20-50 grand a year on travel. Which makes my eyes widen a bit.

    It’s not just on the blogs. At my job, every new hire gets introduced by a faculty member at one of our monthly meetings. Invariably, at least one slide on their introduction PowerPoint will show them hiking, posing in front of a big building, etc., and we will be informed that this person “loves to travel.” Colleagues discuss their European vacation plans.

    Admittedly, this is selection bias. People don’t talk about how they aren’t going on a European vacation, and bloggers tend not to post about how they spend $2,000 on travel this year, not because they were awesome at credit card hacking but because they just didn’t travel anywhere other to visit their parents a few states away.

    Of my immediate family, baring the one who is incarcerated, I am probably least traveled. I was born in Europe but we moved to Nebraska before I could remember anything different. Since then, I’ve been to Mexico and Canada a few times, Peru, some of the Caribbean (on a cruise), England, and Uganda. The sister after me has spent the last two years of her life in Uganda, went to Egypt on a work trip there, visited Israel in seminary, toured through Italy and Ireland during Bible college, went on a river cruise from Austria to the Netherlands a few summers ago, and is currently visiting a friend in Finland and a cousin in Switzerland. My brother went on a world tour after graduating from the Air Force academy including more places than I’m aware of, and spend three years with his wife in England where they went on frequent trips to France, Poland, Greece, Germany and more. My youngest sister studied abroad in Spain. My mom and dad met in Japan and spend the first few years of their married life in Europe. Enough said.

    Actually, typing out all the places I’ve been is making me realize I’ve actually been to quite a few places. Ok, so this is my privilege speaking. Nevertheless…

    When I read and hear about other people’s adventures, part of me feels jealous, like I’m missing out on awesome experiences. Another part of me acknowledges the reality: I’ve been pretty busy for the last 9 years (medical school + residency + fellowship + moving, having a baby and starting my first attending job), I’m a homebody, and my husband accepts traveling as a necessary evil of being married to me.

    While I do hope to visit (some more) cool places some day, I think don’t travel will ever be a major category in our budget, unless we start paying to bring people with us. (That is a distant dream of mine!) That’s ok. My homebody heart and my husband are happy.

    SDG

  • I’m almost eight years older than my husband

    Growing up, I thought that the husband was always older than the wife. After all, my dad was older than my mom. It made sense.

    I wised up as an early teen, when my dad’s youngest sister met the man who would become her husband. I’m not sure how much younger he is than my aunt, but it’s a few years. She is not ashamed of this and says it is the best thing ever.

    I’m not exactly in a position to disagree anymore.

    I was not sure how old my husband was when we started dating in November 2019, but I knew he was a fair bit younger than me. One of his older sisters is my age, and there’s another sister four years younger than me between us. On my flight home for Christmas, I amused myself by calculating the lowest acceptable age he could be. I was thirty at the time, so the bare minimum for him was twenty-two or twenty-three. (The rule is half your age plus seven. I preferred using a more conservative eight.) As it turns out, he was twenty-two. He turned twenty-three in January.

    I’ve had time to get used to it, but contemplating the age gap hasn’t lost its power to astonish me. When I first met my husband, I was twenty-eight and he was twenty. (At that point in our lives, the age gap would have been unacceptable according to my calculations.) I’d graduated college before he started high school. I was driving independently when he was six. At our wedding, my sister joked during her maid of honor speech that she used to pray that God would find me a husband, but “God was just waiting for your relationship to be legal!” I still feel the urge to blush when I have to disclose our birthdates to someone we don’t know.

    Fortunately for me, my husband doesn’t mind. His mother is older than his father, so he’s used to the concept. And, truly, it doesn’t seem to make a difference most of the time. There are life experiences I’ve had, living independently, that he hasn’t – I think the influences some of his disinterest in money. He’s emotionally mature and level-headed. The other day I made a juvenile joke and he said it’s hard to believe I’m older than him sometimes.

    One of my more superficial but nevertheless very real fears is how we are going to look as we get older. People say we look similar in age now, or even that my husband looks older. (It’s probably the mustache.) But as they say, “Black don’t crack.” They don’t say that about white people. About a year ago, I cared for a late middle-aged (but still suave) Black gentleman. With him were three lovely young adult children and his white wife. Sadly for me, she looked old. White cracks. She didn’t seem to mind.

    Maybe I won’t then, either.

    SDG

  • KT chili recipe

    We have some dear church friends from my residency days in Minnesota, and one night they invited us to dinner. They are aware of my husband’s pickiness when it comes to food, but when I saw what was on the menu my heart sank: chili. My husband has consistently reported an aversion to beans of any variety, and I didn’t see how the situation could be rectified. I resigned myself to watch him carefully pick through his bowl to bypass the beans.

    And was instead surprised when he said, “No, I’ll try it” and proceeded to eat the entire bowl. The fact that there was a generous portion of shredded cheese on top and that the chili was served with tortilla chips certainly didn’t hurt, but I was nevertheless simultaneously amazed and grateful that our friends didn’t ask me in advance about whether chili would be a good option – I would have told them no, and we never would have found out that my husband likes chili. How he explains it is that his main problem with beans is a texture issue, and when the beans are soft and mixed in with a similarly-textured ground turkey (in my mind these are not very similar, but it’s ok for him) he finds the texture acceptable. And apparently the taste, too.

    It feels wonderful that my husband can eat plant protein and enjoy it. (Not that this meal doesn’t contain plenty of animal protein, too.) Even better, this recipe is fast and easy. It can definitely come together in 30 minutes but I’d say less, if you’re trying to go fast.

    KT’s chili recipe

    Ingredients

    1 lb ground turkey (you can use any fat percentage, I usually pick the leaner 93%/7% variety)

    1 packet McCormick’s mild chili seasoning

    1 can dark red kidney beans (rinsed and drained)

    1 can light red kidney beans (rinsed and drained)

    1 can petite diced tomatoes (we use an immersion blender – directly in the can – to liquify the tomatoes – my husband doesn’t like the texture otherwise)

    1 can tomato sauce

    OR, in place of the 1 can diced tomatoes and 1 can tomato sauce, you can use a jar of pasta sauce and it’s one less can!

    Shredded cheese (we usually use cheddar)

    Tortilla chips (corn chips like Fritos would do well here, too)

    Instructions

    1. Brown the turkey and drain the fat/extra liquid
    2. Add the seasoning mix
    3. Add all the other cans
    4. Simmer as long as you like, add water if it’s too thick
    5. Serve with as much shredded cheese as you like and tortilla chips

  • All you need is love?

    I have two memories about Moulin Rouge before I saw the movie.

    The first memory involves me riding in a car with one of my more pop-culture aware cousins. A song was playing, and she said that it was from the movie Moulin Rouge, and in the movie the moon is singing that part. Obviously, this sounded bizarre.

    The second memory involves a senior in the class ahead of me and the final show choir concert of the year. Every senior in show choir could choose a song to perform at the concert, and she chose “Your Song,” by Elton John. Only she didn’t say it was by Elton John, she said it was from Moulin Rouge. I didn’t know any better, but I thought I was a nice song.

    After watching the movie, I can confirm that the singing moon is bizarre but overall makes sense in the movie world, and that Your Song is a good song. If one song pops into my head when I think of Moulin Rouge, however, it’s Ewan McGregor crying, “All you need is love!”

    Well, I don’t buy it.

    My husband is a long-time gamer. He is also much more interested in music than I am, so in the car we’re usually listening to one of his playlists, which contain a lot of video game music. One of those entries is “You’re My Number One,” a song written for a Sonic game and sung by the very soulful, very white TJ Davis. It includes the lyrical gem

    All I need is you

    For always and forever

    All you need is me

    Remember when I say

    All we need is love

    For us to be together

    Cause you’re my number one

    It’s a catchy beat but definitely not winning any awards in the songwriting department. The last time I heard that chorus, I turned to my husband and told him, “You aren’t all that I need.” It was a nice romantic moment.

    Finite, fallible humans and the love they can give are no match for our needs. For one thing, they die way too easily. What if the only person you need, whose love is all you need, dies in a car crash? What then? And, how can they possibly fill up the hole if your heart? My husband and I love each other deeply, and that doesn’t keep me from having moments of discontent and restlessness. I’d like to say that it’s not because he’s not enough, but of course he isn’t enough. He’s human. None of us are enough.

    God created us to be dependent on him. He’s the only one who can make the love songs true – all we need IS his love; if he’s our number one, we have all we need. He can fill the hole in our hearts.

    SDG

  • Easier money conversations with a budget

    I think about money a lot. I’ve read articles with stats saying that poor people think/stress about money more than anyone else, what with having to creatively come up with ways to pay the bills and etc. I am squarely in the upper middle/rich category, but it kinda feels like thinking about money is a hobby. A boring one.

    My husband, on the other hand, seems to think about money hardly at all. Part of this may be his disdain for math or numbers in general (unless they happen to be measurements for his woodworking projects… and even then he seems to find them tedious). Part of it may be that his family didn’t engage in long-term financial planning as he grew up. Whatever the reason, for my husband, money talk is a boring and painful chore that he’d prefer to avoid.

    He loves me, however, and so agreed to my request/demand for a “Financial Friday” every month, where we talk about our financial situation and strategize about short and long-term goals. I’ve tried to sweeten the deal with take out, with limited success. Initially, our money dates mostly consisted of me explaining a detailed spreadsheet containing meticulously compiled inflows and outflows with cells containing our savings targets. My husband played along, but Excel makes his eyes glaze over.

    Overall, it felt lonely. My husband was supportive, but despite politely listening to my explanations didn’t seem to have a meaningful understanding of what was going on. Even worse, at times I felt like the budget police, telling him how much or how little he could spend in a particular category.

    To solve this problem, I did something past me would never have imagined doing: I paid for a budgeting app. And after using it for the past five months, I plan to continue to do so.

    There are lots of apps available, but the one we use is called YNAB. (It used to stand for You Need A Budget, but this has now gone the way of the erstwhile Young Men’s Christian Association.) We each have the app on our phone, which allows us to see the available amount in each category and enter in expenses as they come up. (I am better at doing this than my husband, but he participates.) More revolutionary, each category has a green bar than depletes as money is spent, which is incredibly helpful for his visual mind. As a numbers gal, I couldn’t care less, but it allows him to stay focused during our finance talks instead of unconsciously checking out.

    As a result, we actually spend less time discussing our finances on Financial Fridays, because I have less to explain and he understands it better. I feel like I’m not doing all the work because he’s more involved in the day-to-day stuff, and his contributions to our conversations are more informed because he understands it better. I still think about money a lot, but I fret about it a little less.

    SDG